


An absence which could not be more there

by aesc



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Dating, Introspection, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Telepathy, idle sociological reflection via Cosmopolitan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:51:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He prepared to shift another half-step over to the Current Events section (which would, of course, enrage him) when the teaser positioned by the model's left elbow caught his eye: <i>DATING WHILE TELEPATHIC: WHY I DON'T DO IT</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote about 7,000 words of this in one night thanks to [this comment thread](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/727692) on helens78's fic and insomnia/anger-induced reflections on what it's like for telepaths trying to negotiate the dating world and what happens when they're trying to cope with partners who don't/can't/refuse to appreciate how a telepath experiences certain aspects of their relationship. 
> 
> Basically I have very strong Feelings about everything, okay.
> 
> The title is adapted from one of my favorite quotations: "In a caress what is there is sought as though it were not there, as though the skin were a trace of its own withdrawal, a languor still seeking, like an absence which, however, could not be more there" (Emmanuel Levinas).

Darwin & Co. was one of the few mutant-only bookstores in town – as in mutant-owned, mutant-staffed, and stocked only with titles authored by mutants, for mutants. It meant the risk of running into Charles was high – unless, of course, Erik went during the times Charles held classes or office hours, and those times were freely available on the Biology and Biophysics department website. Charles was allergic to Friday classes and had seniority enough to get scheduled for blocks on Monday-Wednesday and Tuesday-Thursday, so generally Erik could count on a safe zone that corresponded to his lunch break four days a week.

That Erik knew Charles saw Friday classes as an abomination sometimes made him feel as if Charles had carved out space in his cortex, permanently, done something shifty and telepathic to fix himself there forever. However many times Erik told himself you didn't forget someone just because they broke up with you and broke your heart (and never mind you probably did that to _yourself_ , you dumb prick), he couldn't quite convince himself that that was true. 

On this particular day, Erik found himself surfing aimlessly through the periodicals, half his mind on the time and the project waiting for him back in the labs. The nightmare of a project, in Erik's opinion, for a client he strongly suspected Stark had hired on purpose – not for the money, which Stark Industries did not need, but as part of some revenge scheme. As project lead, Erik fielded all calls, emails, and visits from Emma Frost, who was exacting, condescending, absolutely not intimidated by Erik, and telepathic. All the other things would have pushed his buttons and held them down, but that last… Stark had done that deliberately, and with malice aforethought.

Erik resolved not to think about that until his hour – working on two hours now, and he was risking it staying this late – was up.

The magazines ran the usual gamut, from celebrity rags to fine art and sports to literary journals, the same assortment found in any human-dominated establishment but by mutant presses and mutant authors. Not fifteen years ago, the selection in front of him wouldn't have been even half what it was now. Absently Erik picked up a copy of _Metamorphosis_ , a short story periodical, and tucked it under his arm, shifted half a step over.

That half-step brought him eye to eye with something offensively neon and glossy, plastered with all-caps teasers promising to reveal the TOP 10 SEX TIPS TO DRIVE HIR **WILD** and the season's favored styles to ACCENTUATE YOUR ADAPTATIONS!!! Christ, Erik thought, rolling his eyes. Weren't they _past_ this? The model, or what Erik could see of her behind the hysterical headlines, was naked and blue-scaled with compelling yellow eyes, and she was probably the only thing not ridiculously backwards and _human_ about the entire publication.

He prepared to shift another half-step over to the Current Events section (which would, of course, enrage him) when the teaser positioned by the model's left elbow caught his eye.

_DATING WHILE TELEPATHIC: WHY I DON'T DO IT_

* * *

Even though Armando's mutation meant he could probably survive whatever Erik threw at him, he'd wisely kept his mouth shut while ringing out Erik's purchases. The silence, punctuated only by the beeps of the register and Armando asking if Erik wanted a bag (and of course Erik wanted a fucking bag, he wasn't going to walk around with _Modern and Mutant_ tucked under his goddamn arm), had still been awkward; Erik had tried to look nonchalant even as the odd conviction that Armando was reading his mind grew in that uncomfortable, unreachable place between his shoulder blades. That this was idiotic, that this was _exactly the same thing_ Charles had accused him of in that quietly disappointed voice of his the last time they'd fought, occurred to him, but he couldn't shake the feeling.

_Either I'm out of your head or I'm in it, Erik; I can't be both._

He'd called into work and told Frost – in slightly more diplomatic terms – to spend the rest of the afternoon fucking herself, because Erik had things to take care of and about two years of unused personal time banked. Leaving Tony out of the loop had been an act of petty vengeance, and Pepper would tell him about it anyway.

The magazine lay in all its hyperbolic ridiculousness next to Erik's elbow. There wasn't much point in putting it off; he'd spent four dollars for what would probably end up being five hundred words of gossipy bitching or a telepath complaining about how the limited conception and prejudice of baseline humans would necessarily inflect their relationship, and anyway, Erik didn't believe in shying from uncomfortable things.

 _Erik, if I can't read your mind, I don't know what's going on unless you tell me. And if you don't want to talk about it, fine, but you need to tell me that_.

Sighing, Erik flipped the magazine open to page 127. From what he could see, the magazine was about ninety pages of ads, thirty pages of gossip and fashion advice, and seven pages of actual writing. At least it would keep the pain of quasi-competent prose to a minimum.

> _* Names and abilities have been changed to protect the assholes._  
> 
> 
> _I knew the relationship was going to be a failure when my now-ex boyfriend decided that, seeing as I was a telepath, he could be emotionally unavailable. After all, as a telepath, I'd do all the work, right? He didn't have to vocalize any of his problems; I could take care of that for him._  
> 
> 
> _That he'd made this unilateral decision didn't occur to me until the night of a friend's party, when then he demanded to know why I "violated his privacy" and read his mind to find out why he was sulking in the corner._  
> 
> 
> _Greg* was a mutant too, a kinetic with the ability to manipulate electric currents. When we first met, well, there were sparks (to use the obvious pun); when we had sex, my climax was like being hit by lightning. He loved it when I shared that with him; in fact, while we were making out on my couch before moving to the bedroom, he told me "I want you in my head so badly; I want to know what you want, I want you to see what you do to me." I was so happy that I'd found a partner who understood that for a telepath the mental connections forged during sex are as or more important than the physical ones._  
> 

The first time with Charles, _god_ , Erik still couldn't find words for that. The vocabulary didn't exist, not for the shy pleasure dancing through Erik's head when Erik had refused to let Charles duck into his flat and had pulled him back and pulled Charles to him and kissed him, and not for the intricate mesh of Charles's mind and his twined together as Charles arched up into him and Erik heard his name like a prayer in stereo on Charles's lips and echoing in his skull. Afterward he'd kissed Charles again, cupping his face in his hands and drawing him close, and he'd thought being able to hold that much happiness – his own and Charles's – shouldn't be possible, that he might split apart with it, cut open by it like a knife.

> _After two months of dating and sex – two months when the only time I spent in my apartment was with him – Greg's lease expired and I invited him to move in with me. That night after we moved him in we had a bottle of wine and sex on his couch (I'd gotten rid of mine; his was nicer), and I told him I was so happy he was there with me and how at home I felt with him._  
> 
> 
> _"What do you mean?" he asked, stroking my collar bone absently._  
> 
> 
> _"Your mind," I explained. "It's… familiar. Like a space I've lived in for ages."_  
> 
> 
> _"Really?" He lifted up his head and looked at me. "I didn't know that."_  
> 
> 
> _"Well," I said, "now you do," and I kissed him on the nose._  
> 
> 
> _Looking back, I should have known that this conversation was the beginning of the end. At the time, I'd only thought it was… the beginning._  
> 

Charles had a tiny, second-story walk-up near Columbia, a place barely large enough to hold himself, the bare minimum of furniture, and a truly staggering amount of books. The only thing that had made packing and moving them tolerable had been a sturdy iron pallet that, along with Erik's powers, could carry twenty boxes at a time. They managed the move in a day, and evening saw Charles spread out on Erik's bed, the loops of the wrought-steel bedstead twisted around his wrists and laced through his fingers. Charles was sweating and flushed and marked all over, biting his lip to hold in his cries but whispering steadily in Erik's head, filthy adoration and pleas and promises, _so so big, god you feel good here's how you feel Erik do you like it how thick your cock is in my ass how amazing it is me filling you up you filling me up god please let me come you can come too we can together –_ and Erik had finally had to bend close and bury his face in Charles's neck and give it up.

With a sigh, Charles stretched out next to him, pressed chest to chest and hip to hip, the soft, sweaty comfort of his hair brushing under Erik's chin. His contentment rippled and eddied against Erik, interlaced with idle musings about another go after they'd recovered and how lovely it felt, settling his mind against Erik's like this and knowing him so well already.

Deep down at the base of his spine, a chill started up. Erik ignored it and kissed Charles on the temple, and reminded himself this was perfection.

> _Around three weeks later the problems started. I got home from work (I run a private practice counseling service, working with teenaged mutants but with a specialty in psionics) and Greg was there already, watching TV in the living room. I walked in, kissed him on the cheek, and said, "I don't really feel like Chinese tonight, but there's that place on Third with the sushi menu; we could do that."_  
> 
> 
> _"I really wish you wouldn't do that," Greg said. He didn't look away from the TV._  
> 
> 
> _"Wish I wouldn't do what?" I asked._  
> 
> 
> _" _You_ know."_  
> 
> 
> _I crossed my arms over my chest. "No," I said, "I don't. So why don't you tell me?"_  
> 
> 
> _"Read my mind like that," Greg replied._  
> 

Work had been a fucking unmitigated _disaster_. One of the interns had managed to lose a set of plans Erik needed; when Erik had gone to the project files in the company server, the folder popped up as empty. They'd needed two hours stroking the IT people's egos to find the damn things, and then Erik had needed ten minutes to chew the intern out. And _then_ , upon opening the files Erik had discovered they were old versions, at least two iterations back, and then his phone had started ringing, and things had only gotten worse from there.

By the time Erik got home, he was in a murderous frame of mind. He sensed Charles inside already, the peculiar resonance of his watch and the brushed-steel pen that lived in the breast pocket of his button-down – and, newer and still foreign, the subtle pressure of Charles's mind against his. Erik had no words for it; the closest he could come was two hands clasped loosely together. Most of the time he could ignore it, but after a day of endless intrusion into his space, he had to bristle.

 _I'm sorry_ , Charles said sympathetically once Erik banged his way in through the front door. He was bent over a cookbook and frowning dubiously at the instructions. _Although I'm sure you've terrified that intern into never messing up again._

"Do you have to have an opinion on _everything_ in my head?" Erik growled.

Mind-Charles went still and distant; the Charles in front of him did the same.

"My apologies," Charles said stiffly, and out loud this time. "I won't do it again."

"I'm sorry for snapping." Erik kissed Charles on one cheek, already busy with his tie. "It's been a shitty day, and I need to wash it off; I'll be out soon." 

That night in bed Erik tightened the steel ring around Charles's cock with the barest flex of his ability, and if Charles's breathy moans and whimpers didn't have their usual richness, and the reflected glow of his happiness was muted, Erik told himself it would pass.

> _About two months post-move, I realized that Greg and I were talking less. Oh, we still had conversations – about what kind of new microwave to buy, whether to go to the basketball game or the poetry reading on Friday – but our hopes and dreams, the minutiae of our days… those seemed to be off the table. The sex was still great, and Greg still encouraged me to use my telepathy in bed, but things seemed different. I stayed out of his head as much as I could, and the longer this went on, the more he seemed like a stranger. And, paradoxically, the more I stayed out of his head, the angrier he got about it – and the more convinced he was that I was "doing something" to him._  
> 
> 
> _Older telepaths, of course, know the dangers of this particular dance: trying to work out boundaries when the other partner is unclear about where those boundaries should be. A good number of them – most of those I've talked to, come to think of it – now only date empaths or other telepaths. Much of that has to do with the tiresome and contradictory attitudes non-psionics have toward mind-reading, but those attitudes are inextricably related to non-psionics' inability to understand the fundamental ways in which psionics' experiences and identities challenge Western preconceptions such as the wholly private, interior self._  
> 
> 
> _"I found it's so important to be with someone who doesn't entertain archaic, baseline concepts of discrete individuality," Indira Das, a telepath from Kolkata, told me one day. She had come to the States as a graduate student to study postcolonial literature at NYU, and had written her dissertation on the intersection of colonial and posthuman identities in modern Indian fiction. Along the way, she had acquired not only a doctorate but a heart broken by a non-psionic partner who accused her of stalking and coercion in the course of their breakup; she almost lost her student visa before police dropped the investigation. "I met Penny [her wife] at a support group for psionics," Indira explained, "and when she told me that she'd had the same experiences, and that she'd found it impossible to explain how her telepathy influenced her experience of constructs like individuality and selfhood."_  
> 
> 
> _James Westcott, 32, agrees: "Non-psionics aren't mentally equipped to deal with people for whom "reading minds" isn't necessarily the be-all and end-all of their experiences; it's not just reading minds for telepaths, or reading feelings for empaths, but having your worldview reshaped at this really basic level by interacting with people in ways they aren't able to appreciate. My first girlfriend couldn't understand that – neither could my second, third, and fourth. After the last one, I decided to stick with other psionics, because they're the only people who can comprehend the ways in which my telepathy is a central part of my identity."_

"Erik, for god's sake, what's wrong?"

Charles was poking at him again, like poking a bear with a very short, very annoying stick. Erik turned over, hoping the wall of his back would send the message Charles clearly wasn't getting and, to emphasize it, thought _Shut up about it_ as hard as he could.

Charles shut up about it and withdrew.

The next morning, Charles sat hunched over a stack of grading and a cup of tea when Erik wandered out of the bedroom. He glanced briefly at the papers, half-expected Charles to tell him what they were, a fondly exasperated mental whisper of _first drafts of lab reports_ or _abysmal pop quiz_. Silence greeted his inquiry, and the silence continued as Erik made his coffee – Charles hadn't started it – and poured his cereal and sat down.

With Charles immersed in whatever horror the undergraduates were inflicting on him and apparently bent on ignoring Erik, Erik could study him freely – study him sitting still, which he rarely had the opportunity to do with Charles as kinetic as he was. In the morning he was beautiful and disheveled, with his hair unbrushed and ridiculous glasses balanced on his nose, still in his t-shirt and boxers, bare calf and ankle hooked around one leg of his chair and pushing back the ratty bathrobe. Beautiful, Erik thought, with a sudden and abrupt pulse of fondness.

Charles didn't look up.

 _You're beautiful_ , Erik thought, more forcefully this time.

Charles made a series of red marks on one paper, wrote a number at the top, and reached for the next one.

"Did you hear me?" Erik asked.

"No," Charles said. He inscribed an emphatic _X_ on the first question. "No, I did not. Did you say something?"

"I did." Erik tried a smile; he wasn't very good at it. "Am I getting rusty?"

"Oh," and Charles did look up this time, all wide and guileless eyes and anger thick in his voice, "is this one of the times I'm allowed to know what you're thinking?"

"What?" Jesus, he'd been trying to compliment Charles, not – not do _this_ , whatever this was. "Charles, what the hell do you mean?"

"I mean," Charles said slowly, placing the pen down on the table, "am I supposed to read your mind even after you've told me not to? Or am I supposed to be able to divine when I'm allowed to read you _without_ reading you to do it? I'm a telepath, not a precog."

Erik stared. "What the fuck? What are you talking about?"

"Forget it," Charles sighed. He picked up his pen and bent his head over the paper. "Just forget it, it's pointless."

> _For myself, it came down to the fact that non-psionics seem willfully ignorant of the burden placed on psionics in relationships: One minute we're expected read minds in order to do the heavy emotional lifting in the relationship, but the next it's KEEP OUT!!!! And when we respect the wishes of our partners and keep our minds to ourselves – something that is incredibly difficult for some of us – our partners demand to know why we don't know what they want and don't know what they're thinking about._  
> 
> 
> _Strangely, they want us to read their minds or live in their mindscape only when it's advantageous for them, when they don't want to articulate their emotions or their reasons, or when they know that psionic abilities will benefit them – usually in sex. We all know the extent to which modern popular culture fetishizes telepathy, and how depictions of telepathy in sexual scenarios affect how non-psionic partners of telepaths and empaths think psionic sexual relationships work. Almost all telepaths I've met roll their eyes at mainstream depictions of soulbonds, "mindsex," and psionic bondage kinks; empaths detest the extent to which they're spiritualized or reduced to de-sexed maternal figures._  
> 

"Do you have to know everything that goes on in my head?" Erik was trying to straighten the bookshelf; Charles's peculiar filing habits – completely unsystematic and relying on his photographic memory – drove him nuts. "Don't you think you can let me have some secrets?"

"I don't do it on purpose," Charles protested. "It's – I like knowing about you. I don't mean to be intrusive; I don't see it as intruding."

"Maybe you should see it as intruding." Erik sighed, breath ragged in his throat. "Just…"

"Just what?" Charles stared at him and god, there were no words for the look on Charles's face, desperation and confusion and Charles wanting to _understand_ , and what the fuck was so hard to get, that Erik didn't want to be understood?

"Don't you know?" Erik indicated his temple. Charles shook his head, bewildered, and Erik snapped, "Fucking _read my mind_ , and maybe you'll get it, seeing as words apparently aren't good enough."

"You told me not to," Charles said, voice tight. "What the hell do you want me to do, Erik? Because I have no idea why you're so angry about whatever you're angry about if you won't let me read you and you refuse to tell me."

" _Look_." Erik pointed to his own temple.

He didn't feel it, the surgical precision of Charles slipping in and out. He shivered all the same, imagining it.

"Okay," Charles said at last. He nodded, as if coming to a decision, and Erik wanted to laugh at the irony of wanting to know what was going on in Charles's head. Instead, as he watched, Charles turned and, hands in his pockets, left the room.

A moment later, the front door opened and then shut again. Erik didn't feel Charles's watch returning until well after midnight, and he had gone to bed.

> _One of the persistent ironies (in the incorrect sense) of being a telepath is how we can be quite blind to ourselves and to the realities of situations in which we are involved. Telepaths aren't clairvoyants (although we're often confused with them), and at times our sight can be as muddied as anyone else's. So those of you who are psionics will understand when I say that my relationship staggered on for perhaps five months after it had died._  
> 
> 
> _I realized that I'd been kicking the proverbial dead horse one night after an exceptionally difficult day at work. I'd had a new patient intake, a twelve-year-old girl whose abilities had manifested unexpectedly and, in a family poorly equipped to deal with her gifts, catastrophically. We all know the suicide rates for telepaths – down in recent years due to better interventions, but still second-highest among mutants, just behind those who present with extreme physical mutations – and I had had those figures very much in my mind while dealing with my new client. As a result, by the time I got home my shields were shot to hell; I was projecting all over the place and on information overload from the subway, the streets at rush hour, and the hundred other people in our building. By the time I got up the stairs, I sensed Greg in our apartment, upset about something. He usually was, these days._  
> 
> 
> _Despite his dislike of my using my telepathy outside of pre-approved scenarios, I was so exhausted I simply picked up on his thoughts. You all know what it's like, right? You focus on the familiar voice, the one you know, without realizing it. So I didn't need any effort at all to realize he was wondering if I'd been reading his mind without telling him, if I'd discovered that he was corresponding with someone from his office, a circuits specialist whose mutation was closer to his own. He didn't want to miss the sex with me, though – that was the best he'd ever had – but was that worth the risk? Was I controlling him, manipulating him into staying with me? How could he be sure?_  
> 
> 
> _Exhausted as I was, I was sorely tempted to block out knowledge of my presence from him, walk into the apartment, pack my things and leave. But I couldn't bring myself to do that. I walked in openly instead._  
> 
> 
> _"What are you doing?" he asked when I avoided his welcome-home kiss and began to walk to our bedroom._  
> 
> 
> _"Leaving," I said._  
> 

_Honestly, Erik._

Charles's lectures had always begun that way; the one about two weeks before they broke up had been no exception. It had come after two months of drifting, Charles almost completely absent from his head, a presence Erik missed and resented because he missed it. In the safety of his office he wondered if Charles was manipulating him somehow; the very fact that he entertained that notion for even the briefest second should have told him how very much he'd fucked up, but at the time… At the time he'd been trying to focus on the structural integrity of a prototype and Charles managed to be _in his head_ when he was supposed to be out of it, when he wasn't actually in it. He'd left a residue, or a sore spot, something Erik had to pick at.

He'd returned home angry, and between opening the front door and finding Charles on the couch, already in his jeans and t-shirt and rubbing at his temples, had _snapped_. What he said he had no idea, but it ended up with Charles stumbling to his feet, spilling his tablet and some books to the floor, wide-eyed with fury.

"I have a headache!" Charles said. "I've had one all day, but I need to get this data set analyzed."

"So you weren't, what, tracking me coming up the stairs?" Where that had come from, Erik couldn't begin to say. Maybe up from the well of suspicion he'd never been able to seal up.

"Honestly, Erik." Charles's voice shivered with anger; any more and it would break. "Any baseline sense – vision, smell, hearing, you name it – takes in an incredible amount of information, but the mind processes only a small percentage of it. The same is true for telepaths. Yes, I'm open to thoughts and feelings around me, but I rarely pay attention to them in detail; it's too much effort, and I'd rather expend it on more important things. _Like my work, for example._ "

"Oh, so I'm like any petty baseline, then," Erik said sarcastically. "That's fucking wonderful, thanks, Charles."

"That's not what I mean, and you know it." Charles moved to the far side of the couch, arms crossed defensively. His eyes were bright and his anger – that was almost tangible, hot and thin and edged like an electric charge in the air. Erik knew Charles's control and knew he could keep himself from projecting, and the fact that he wasn't bothering to harness himself –

"I don't see why I should," Charles snapped.

"What the _fuck_ did I tell you about staying out of my head?" Erik held himself back, held on to the dependable iron of the coffee table like a lifeline, the only thing holding him back from fury.

"Why the fuck should I _care_?" Charles shook his head. "So is that how it is in this relationship? You use your powers to hold me down and fuck me, you get to express yourself and your nature, you get to be _proud_ of it – and what, I can be proud as long as I keep my mind to myself? As long as I only use it in ways that make you feel comfortable or get you off? Whenever you don't feel like saying what's on your mind but want me to know anyway without you having to do the work? Fuck you. _Fuck_ you."

Charles wasn't even shouting. He stood there, contained, controlled, but his anger – that battered at Erik like a riptide, tugging and yanking and inexorable. He tried to push his own anger up against it, but it was a small thing against Charles's, half-drowned _Can't you just listen for once? I thought you telepaths were supposed to be so fucking good at listening._

Abruptly the anger cut off, the sharpness of it softening and fading. Nothingness took its place, and next to the anger it was cold.

"I'm going," Charles said. His voice had gone thin, but woven in there was a thread of steel.

"Going where?" Wrong-footed and hating it, Erik could only stare and try to think where Charles might possibly want to go at this time of night. Dinner? How the hell could he even think about eating? Erik's stomach had tied itself in knots, and something heavy settled in it.

"I'll be back tomorrow to box up my things," Charles continued calmly. "The movers will be here by the end of the week."

"You're breaking up with me?" Erik asked.

He trailed Charles, Charles who was ignoring him, down the hall to the bedroom. Their bedroom. The bed was still disarranged from last night – they hadn't had sex, but Charles had been restless, murmuring sadly to himself in dreams Erik couldn't suss out (and in former times Charles's dreams had been quiet, sweet, and lapped at the edges of Erik's) – and Erik couldn't reconcile that, the reminder of the two of them with Charles pulling a duffel from the closet and shoving things into it.

Erik counted three shirts, two pairs of pants, socks, a fistful of underwear. Charles vanished into the bathroom to collect his shaving kit and toothbrush. His watch burned, the skin under it hot with agitation. The sound of the zip closing shivered across him.

"Don't leave," Erik said, moving to block the door. He could do it easily, tall as he was.

"Don't make me make you move," Charles said quietly, and fuck, his eyes had gone liquid, sheen of tears across them, and the tears didn't fall. There was iron underneath them, though, and the quiet reminder that Charles could take every last memory of himself from Erik's head, if he wanted. He could take everything, if he wanted, everything that Erik was. Charles sighed. "I would never do that. Don't end it like this, Erik, _please_."

Nothing of Charles's pleading flickered through his head, but Erik didn't need it, not with it laid bare in Charles's eyes.

He stepped to the side to let Charles shoulder past, gaze fixed on the wall across from him and the strange, subtle patterns in the paint.

> _All I felt from him was anger. Not even relief – anger, that I'd read his mind, that I refused to feel bad about it, that I was going to leave him when he had more right to it because I'd done what I told him I wouldn't do. While I packed, I thought about how he had refused to give me the benefit of the doubt, that he had assumed I'd violated his privacy with malicious intent. After that day, and after months of repressing myself, I didn't have the energy to correct him._
> 
> _I wish I'd found that energy; I'm sure he's out there now, confirmed in his bias against psionics and convinced that I'd tricked him into togetherness with malice aforethought. But you only have so much in you, and I prefer to save my resources to help those who need it, not those who remain willfully ignorant._
> 
> _Note to you non-psionics out there: Your thoughts aren't that remarkable and unique. That you believe so is a function of Western psychologies of individuality and doctrines of uniqueness that hold that discrete minds are inherently special, exceptional, and worthy of notice. It's a curious sort of enshrined egotism. If you honestly believe telepaths are obsessed with every minute detail of what goes on in your head, you're sorely mistaken. Most of us, unless we have a particular interest in you, don't notice and don't care. It's the equivalent of believing a cashier is committing to memory some bizarre combination of things that you're purchasing. They really don't give a fuck._
> 
> _When we do have an interest, we want to know you. We can't help it; that's who and what we are. We love you, and to have you treat our desires as intrusive and evil, aren't we justified in feeling hurt? When you assume that we must always know what you're thinking so you can avoid being honest and open with us, how does that make you an equal partner in the relationship? When you make the suppression of our powers and identity a condition for intimacy, how can we be intimate – so how are you any better than the baselines who want us to muffle our abilities so they can feel safer?_

_For the first few months after Charles left, Erik leaned on anger._

_He'd never had much use for grief. Even standing at his parents' coffins while the gathered mourners and the rabbi murmured psalms the grief had been a distant thing, overwhelmed by fury; he only allowed himself tears that night in the rabbi's guest bedroom, with a handful of distant, disinterested relatives sitting shiva downstairs. After that, anger saw him through the trial of his parents' murderer – it saw him through the detention the judge gave him for trying to crush the killer's wrists with the handcuffs binding them – it saw him through the carousel of foster care because no family would keep a kid with unlawful use of mutant abilities on his record, even if the judge had been lenient and noted that Erik had acted purely out of the impulse of a bereaved child._

_Where grief froze, anger could heat and burn and activate him, and it was better (he'd learned this) to strike first rather than wait, and remorse only added more pain to a situation that was already painful enough. All the times he'd traded a family for a group home, he hadn't ever left anything behind that he might regret; after he aged out and his beleaguered case worker let him out of their last meeting and, surprisingly, wished him good luck at MIT, he forgot her name and forgot New York for a while too. So he'd never been well-versed in regret or longing, although he suspected Charles might be trying to teach him._

_Erik much preferred the anger._

Erik closed the magazine. The afternoon had drifted on, the sun now in the far corner of the window and sending a slant of light across the coffee table, his legs, the half-empty bookcase by the sofa. He hadn't moved his books back, despite six months passing. Laziness, he told himself, and not hoping Charles would come back, and he'd been busy – over-busy – with work. Tony had been impressed with his productivity.

The last time Erik had heard from Charles had been the one phone call to confirm that Erik would be home on Saturday to let the movers in. He'd escaped to work the morning following Charles's departure; Charles must have canceled class and packed in record time, because that night Erik had returned home, exhausted, to gutted bookshelves, his spare keys on the counter, and piles of boxes in the dining room. Then the phone call the following day, Charles's voice detached and distant with more than the static of his cell phone, and that had been that. Once the movers had come and gone, Charles had vanished from Erik's life and his head, and left traces in his absence.

Sometimes Erik woke up wondering at the stillness, turning over and half-expecting to see Charles snoring next to him, loose-limbed and taking up most of the bed. Attacks of conscience – wholly unwelcome, when he couldn't muster up enough anger to ward them off – usually came at those hours, staring at the empty pillow and wondering over the pain and confusion on Charles's face. In those quiet hours, the question hadn't been _why the hell didn't Charles understand_ , but something Erik couldn't articulate, close to _what didn't I understand?_.

Every time he tried to see the situation from Charles's point of view, his mind looped in on itself, defensive, _he could just ask questions like everyone else on the planet does_ , and never mind that Erik hated questions, that it was easier to let Charles excavate the answers for himself, and never mind that Erik hated it when Charles had done that. _Why couldn't he leave well enough alone_ , but why was Charles's telepathy permissible only when Erik didn't feel uncomfortable – why was that quiet touch suddenly so terrifying, when it had never once actively threatened him?

It was the _notion_ , maybe, the dizzying, incomprehensible power that Charles possessed. Erik shrugged against the tightness in his shoulders, and against the last lines of the article.

Fear without cause. _That_ was baseline, assuming that someone with a particular ability that couldn't be quantified or easily described would use that ability against him.

That _Charles_ would, fuck, that the same person who'd taken one look at Erik (a stray, abandoned at a mutual acquaintance's party and lurking in the corner) and pulled him into conversation like saving him from drowning – Erik had thought that Charles was capable of pirating his thoughts, violating his privacy and not caring about it. Erik shut his eyes. Shit, shit, _fuck_ , he had thought that. He'd believed it, and not stopped for a minute to ask why.

His head hurt, a tension headache mixed with no lunch and a peculiar twinge behind his eyes. Erik rubbed at his temple, chasing the throb and the pain. He couldn't catch it. Apparently, he hadn't caught a lot of things in the past year – or caught them and then lost them.

Sighing, he set the magazine back on the coffee table. His stomach growled, but he had no appetite, and with his own thoughts making him dizzy, he couldn't see the point of eating. Instead, he resituated himself against the arm of the sofa and summoned his laptop to him and, after opening it, began to type.

* * *

"So," Tony said, "am I going to get my top engineer back, or is he going to mope in his metaphorical cave for the next ten years?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Erik especially had no idea what Tony was talking about because five other engineers were in the room, waiting for the progress meeting to start.

"What I'm talking about is, I tried to break you with Emma Frost, and all you did was take more personal time." Tony idly flipped through some project specs. "I might have to hand the project off to Azazel, but I'm sure he can find a way to make sure Frost keeps emailing and texting you personally. I could demote you to secretary."

"The work's getting done on time and on budget."

Tony hmmm'ed. "It is, and it's high-quality as always. And I'm all for non-standard approaches to work and such, _buuuut_ … while it's almost brilliant enough to be one of my designs and you're cranking it out at a speed that suggests you're on something, I have it on good authority that you're running _under_ budget because you're doing all the work yourself. The lab rats are bored."

"Frost is an important client." One of the engineers – Erik forgot her name – was drifting perilously close, preparing to take her seat. He lowered his voice. "Is that it?"

"Nope!" Tony said cheerfully and unnecessarily loudly. "I also want to know why the browser history in your _work_ tablet includes websites like Psi-Info.org, and why you're reading articles about sensory integration in psionic mutants and why you have the autobiographies of two telepaths in your e-book library."

"That _is_ none of your business," Erik growled, "and I'll thank you to drop it."

"I didn't want to get split up in the divorce. Charles is still a good friend, so he _is_ kind of my business." Tony smiled at him, a smile only marginally less predatory than Erik's best. "I hope for your sake you're not planning on finding other ways to fuck him up."

"No," Erik said softly, and the softness was mostly because the defensiveness had gone out of him. "No, I'm not."

Tony examined him closely, so closely Erik wondered if maybe Tony weren't secretly telepathic himself. The last time Erik had been subjected to that scrutiny had been during his hiring interview, when Tony had studied him for two long, silent minutes before finally announcing he thought Erik looked like a contrary, arrogant bastard, and he liked him already.

"Okay then," Tony said now, at last, and turned to call the meeting to order.

* * *

Anger had gotten him nowhere over the past six months, Erik had realized eventually. Where he could direct it profitably against many people, even Charles at first, he couldn't sustain it, not in the face of what he'd slowly realized had been his own hypocrisy. He knew what it was like to be angry at himself (nights lying in a crowded dormitory, telling himself he could have saved his parents if he'd been stronger, if he'd known more about his abilities), and in the clarity of that anger had determined at least to set things right between himself and Charles, even if he couldn't have what he really wanted: Charles back with him. 

The website for Charles's department at Columbia, in addition to listing Charles's class times, also listed his office hours and his office location. He had his office near his labs, in a building satisfyingly constructed of steel framing overlaid with marble and less-satisfying drywall, and replete with the metal of filing cabinets, lab equipment, and microscopes. The doors to more sensitive areas were reinforced steel, held shut by electronic locks and heavy deadbolts, and Erik found himself somewhat more secure.

He walked down the hallway, ignoring the occasional curious glances from the students and lab techs, one eye on the numbers as they climbed upward and his mind on the presence of a watch, each link and gear of it intimate and familiar. Erik wondered if Charles sensed him coming, if his mind had the same sort of shape in Charles's head as Charles's watch had in his.

 _You're only another mind_ , Erik reminded himself. He didn't mean it to be reassuring, but a reminder of a different reality than the one he'd assumed was true.

> www.psi-info.org
> 
> _With proper training, telepaths learn to discriminate among a high amount of sensory data. Most psionic impressions, approximately 80 to 90% depending on sensitivity and alertness, register as background or white noise; the majority of the remaining percentage is analyzed subconsciously and either discarded as unimportant or used to contextualize the very small amount of input that is actively processed and interpreted._
> 
> _The most common metaphor used to explain psionic sensory integration and cognition is that of a non-psionic in a crowded room. The non-psionic has the initial impression of undifferentiated noise, but as zie moves to join a group, more cognitive energy is devoted to following the flow of conversation and filtering out irrelevant or extraneous information. Much the same can be said for telepaths: active reading and interpretation of thoughts requires concentration to some degree, a concentration that telepaths do not consistently sustain. Contrary to the expectation of non-psionics, the majority of a psionic's sensory experiences are passive in nature; fear that one's thoughts are being constantly monitored stems from this fundamental misunderstanding of psionic experiences._

The corridor wound around, interminable. Erik's shoes sounded loud on the tile and in the empty, sterile air of the hallway. He passed by an open lab door that was festooned with warning signs and science jokes; a grad assistant, huge and blue-furred looked up and growled something Erik didn't catch to the tiny Asian girl beside him.

He was close now, the body-warm steel of Charles's watch a caress in the corner of his brain that held his power, still pleasurable and familiar and intimate despite six months of separation. Erik shuddered, sighed, tried to open himself and remember the words he'd practiced in the shower and over the breakfast he hadn't eaten.

Charles's office was tucked in a corner, a sign posted on the wall announcing that he would be holding advising hours on Wednesday instead of Thursday the following week due to a conference involving a long, complex acronym. A smiley face and Charles's scribble of a signature ended the reminder. By it was the room number and Charles's nameplate, _Charles Francis Xavier, Professor of Genetics and Biophysics, X-Genome Working Group Co-Chair_ , and Erik stared at it dully for a long moment, half-wanting to trace the familiar shapes of the letters.

 _Open, open_ , he reminded himself as he gathered breath and what courage he could and knocked on the door.

He felt, suspended and waiting and helpless, the watch moving – drawing back, scraping against something (a desk, perhaps) – and, more tentatively, the inquiring brush of Charles's mind ( _who are you who's here oh_ ) before it danced back. For a terrible moment he wondered if he would have to wait out Charles on the other side of the door, if Charles would call security, and why the _hell_ was he here, he should have emailed or called first – no, that was hiding, and there was only one way to do this.

 _Charles_ , he thought, almost every atom of his concentration bent on following the trace of iron in Charles' blood, his watch, his pen. Between the three of them they traced their own impression of Charles, tired, probably wary but determined to be polite even so, and that impression melded with the cheap brass and iron of the door handle as Charles's hand closed around it to pull the door open.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am all verklempt at the response to the first chapter of this. Seriously, I'd had the thing written for a week before I posted it, but I'd been hanging onto it because it deals with some things that are close to my fannish heart, and as I said, I have Feelings about it.
> 
> For those who are going straight to the second chapter: I went back and edited the first part for some characterization. I wasn't entirely happy with the way I'd written Erik; he wasn't angry enough, if that makes sense, and I tend to read him as the sort of person who stays permanently stuck at the "angry" stage of the stages of grief and loss, and who deals with it by taking action. He wasn't really that person in the first chapter, so I've gone in and fixed some things.

Charles had given him a set of brushed-steel technical pens for his birthday, a gift Erik appreciated for its craftsmanship more than its utility; he did most of his work on his computer or tablet, only the most occasional sketching in the early stages of an idea. Still, one made its home behind his ear or on the desk at his workstation. The other, he discovered after searching for it one day, had taken up permanent residence in Charles's breast pocket because Charles, an inveterate pen thief, had stolen it. 

He still had it, even now, warmed by the skin under his shirt and the heavy cardigan resting over it. Erik thoughtlessly traced the contours of it and reached inside the smooth barrel to the complex of springs and the steel nib, so small and so carefully wrought.

> _Of course, psionics can be and often are happy with non-psionics. Those relationships can end in differences of opinion over politics or veganism or one partner cheating on the other, not over the place of psionic abilities in the relationship. Even though I've decided not to pursue non-psionics romantically, I talked to some who have enjoyed everything from friends-with-benefits to marriage and everything in between._
> 
> _"It was rough going with Ben and me at first," confesses Ayesha Bradley. A telepath and actress, she and Ben met at open auditions one day down on Broadway. "We almost split up, but then I was like look: we need to decide what we can and can't live with. I need to know what you want from me. If I can give you that – and you can give me what I need – we can stay together. If not, it's quits. I think it takes more work, but when you've got the right person, the work is worth it."_

"Erik." Charles's hand fell away from the door knob. Surprise – not Erik's own – washed over him like a tsunami, and in its wake came a confusion of regret, happiness, suspicion, _oh god what is he doing here_ , enough to be swamped and be drowned in, before the impossible tide vanished. Left in the wreckage, Erik's breath seemed very loud, and feeble in his lungs.

"I'm sorry," Charles said. He hadn't loosened his death grip on the handle of the door; the pressure of his hand seemed about to superheat it.

"Don't be," Erik said. "I – I shouldn't have come without calling. I can't imagine – well."

Charles gazed absently off down the hall for a moment, and in that moment Erik would have given anything to know what he was thinking.

 _I'm trying to remember if I'd forgotten anything of mine at your place_. Charles's mind-voice was not without humor, rueful as it was, although mostly Erik heard exhaustion and something very close to sadness.

"No, you didn't, although I may have finished the box of tea you left." In point of fact, Charles _had_ forgotten something, a scratchy wool scarf striped with the colors of Pembroke College that had fallen off its hanger in the closet. Erik had unearthed it while looking for something else, and the scarf had smelled – well, like dusty wool and only very faintly of Charles's aftershave, but even knowing Charles would probably wonder where it was when the weather started cooling, he hadn't been able to bring himself to return it.

"Then I have to admit I'm at a loss." 

Charles shifted from foot to foot, bit his lower lip absently, the way he did when chewing over a difficult problem. Months ago, Erik would have told him to knock it off, did he _know_ what he was doing to Erik for Christ's sake, and then he would have run a careful thumb over the sore spot and replaced it with his mouth.

He did none of this now, and Charles gave no sign that he'd been following Erik down memory lane, only continued to eye Erik warily and _wait_.

In the few shameful fantasies Erik permitted himself – the ones he never brought out and examined in the light of day – he would have confessed everything and apologized for everything (what the _everything_ was, Erik never detailed in these fantasies), and Charles would _know_ how welcome he was, that he needn't ask for permission. It would have been a few minutes of painful awkwardness before resolution leading to a nebulous happily-ever-after in which they just _were_ , never mind the details.

"It doesn't work like that," Charles said. His mouth twisted, the crooked half-smile he offered on the rare occasions he couldn't bother to pretend happiness. "Sometimes I wish it did."

"I know." That those dreams lay uncomfortably on him – Erik was a realist and a pragmatist from the skin right down to the center of his bones – didn't make them any less real. He took a breath. "I didn't come here expecting anything," he said when he could be certain of his words, "only – only hoping I could," and _could what_ Erik still hadn't worked out yet. _Talk, apologize, tell you everything I've learned._

"I was hoping I could see you," he concluded.

Charles exhaled raggedly and seemed to lose something in breathing out. His resolve, maybe; as open as Charles usually was, it was strange to see him vulnerable.

"You'd better come in," Charles said at last, and stepped aside to permit Erik inside.

The office was much like Erik had seen it last, still a chaos of papers and books, all organized according to Charles's non-existent filing system. British to the bitter end despite twenty years in the States, Charles had an electric kettle stationed on top of a file cabinet and a box of his favorite tea sitting next to it. Two computer screens sat on one side of Charles's desk, one of them drowsing in electronic standby dreams, the other open to a screen filled with hieroglyphics and whatever secret code it was Charles knew that let him decipher people's genes.

"For the X-Genome project." Charles gazed at the screen fondly. "My lab is working on the factors that modulate the expression of telepathic and empathic abilities. It's times like this when it's clear that the notion of a single _X-gene_ is woefully inaccurate, although it does sound rather catchy."

"A set of genes, then?" Erik asked.

Charles beamed at him, pleasure lapping up against Erik's awareness, like warm water curling around his toes. "Yes, or rather, that's what we're thinking. My thought is that the expressions of mutant phenotypes, unpredictable as they are, are due to interactions with baseline genes, but of course we haven't – " Charles cut himself off. "I can't imagine you came here to talk about my work."

"No," Erik admitted, "I didn't."

"Would you like to sit down?" Charles gestured at the small sofa and easy chair in the corner opposite his desk. Mercifully, half the sofa was drowned in stacks of file folders. Erik sat on the easy chair anyway, and watched with an increasing sense of unreality as Charles poured filtered water into the kettle and turned it on.

"How is _your_ work?" Charles asked. He was staring fixedly at the kettle. "Are you still the terror of Stark Industries?"

Erik, rather against his will, found himself hypnotized by the slowly heating iron plate under the kettle's base, and had to pull himself together to answer, "Frustrating. My current project is for a rather demanding client."

" _Demanding_ is putting it lightly, when it comes to Emma Frost." Charles favored him with a smile, rather more honest than the last one. "I thought you could choose your own projects."

"Emma wanted the best," Erik said. It had the virtue of being true – Emma wanted the best and Erik was the best – although it did not have the virtue of being a complete answer; the other half of that answer was that Tony was a sadist. To deflect any possibility of discussing that, he added, "Best or not, though, I'm about ready to turn the whole thing over to Azazel and Janos."

"I thought you liked them."

"Not as much as I value my sanity."

He caught the edge of Charles's grin. The water in the kettle started bubbling ferociously; Erik felt the heating mechanism switch off as the kettle beeped. Charles fixed his cup – a battered mug Erik recognized, a relic from Charles's grad school days – and added milk from the mini-fridge hunched next to the file cabinet. His hand shook once and the milk splashed heavily into the mug.

"Are you sure you don't want tea?" Charles asked.

"I'm fine, thank you." Erik's heart had started to crowd up into his throat, and fear and anticipation had him leaning forward, tense, a tug that either wanted to pull him into Charles or pull him out the door.

Charles settled on the couch, close enough for Erik, if he were foolish enough, to reach out and lay a hand on Charles's knee. For a moment, Erik thought he might be that foolish. Charles looked… like Charles, not that Erik had expected six months to change him, but the fact was surprising nonetheless; Charles in his heavy cardigan and worn corduroys, his habitual button-down with the top two buttons undone, possibly a scientific t-shirt on underneath – all that was unchanged, and Erik found himself desperately grateful for it.

"I suppose we should get down to it," Charles said, eyeing Erik cautiously. "What did you want to see me about?"

Erik steeled himself and reminded himself _open open open_ , even if Charles wasn't reading him. _You deserve this; you should have had it months ago. You didn't deserve any of what I did to you._

"I wanted – I wanted to say how sorry I am," he managed. It was an effort, holding Charles's gaze, but the moment and the challenge were upon him and Erik Lehnsherr had never backed down. "You shouldn't have had to apologize for what you can do."

"I'm done apologizing," Charles told him. "But thank you for giving me a special exemption anyway."

"I didn't mean it like that." Erik throttled back the frustration that – _already_ , no no no – started to burn low in his gut. "I only – I meant that it was wrong _for me_ to expect you to apologize for using your abilities. And it was wrong for me to expect that a condition of you staying with me would be you only using your telepathy in ways I wanted you to, without the two of us discussing it."

"It was hypocritical," Charles said in a brittle tone of voice, the words fragmented by anger and disappointment. Disappointment _in him_ , Erik realized, and that stung far worse than the anger did. "It was hypocritical and cruel, whether you consciously meant it or not."

"And I know that now. And that doesn't excuse the fact that I didn't know it when I should have – when I could have spared you all this." Erik drew a breath and hoped Charles could see, or hear, or feel, the truth in him. "And I can't – there are no words to say how sorry I am for that."

"It wasn't only that, Erik," Charles said. The tea in his mug shook, almost splashing over the edge; Charles set the mug down on the coffee table. "It was that you didn't _want_ to know it, however many times I tried to explain it to you. You were too busy being… being resentful and angry at me, to bother listening."

He wanted to bridle at that, the _I had a right to be angry when you were invading my privacy_ welling up instinctively, on the tip of his tongue almost before he knew it. Charles sighed heavily – of course he'd caught that – and Erik wanted desperately to touch him, then, do something to bring him back.

"I didn't have the right," he said, when he could trust his voice again. He searched for his next words, almost impossible with Charles looking at him with those eyes, like he was looking for something in Erik and not finding it. "No matter what I believed then, I know I was wrong. That I _am_ wrong. But thinking like that – thinking you were deliberately intruding – is… I don't trust easily. And I don't like people knowing about me."

"You don't trust _me_ ," Charles said. "You might not trust people in general, but you fastened onto my telepathy as a way to justify distrusting _me_ , when I hadn't done anything to you. If you couldn't trust me, why were you ever with me in the first place?"

 _Because I love you_. If this had been a movie, the scene would have ended with Charles launching himself into Erik's arms and the fuzzy happy ending that would fade to black. As it was, Charles looked away, biting his lip again. _That makes it worse, you know._

"I don't know why I was with you," Erik said, because the lie was easier to say. "I think… I wanted what you were offering, but couldn't bring myself to accept it. Or, I wanted certain things, just not – not all of you. Of what you could do."

"Did it ever once occur to you how unfair that was?" Charles asked. "Before you read all those books about telepaths and relationships, anyway."

"No." There wasn't much more to say than that.

Charles nodded thoughtfully, and then gave him an image, a memory: framed photos on Erik's wall unit, one of his parents next to a lump of red-streaked iron ore, and next to that a college-aged Erik and Azazel each holding signs, surrounded by mutants. Erik's sign read _No more hiding_ , printed out in marker and blocky, awkward capitals. The memory fuzzed at the edges and dispelled.

"Was there a special exception for telepaths I didn't catch?" Charles asked, and there was an edge of demand to the words. "Should I have read the fine print?"

"There shouldn't have been." _But it was there regardless._ Erik stared at Charles's hands, clasped loosely between his knees. The corduroy over one knee had gone a bit threadbare. "But – but I'd always thought there was a difference between being able to manipulate physical forces and a person's thoughts. Not that you shouldn't have to hide what you are but – "

"But not _do_ what I am?" Charles snorted. "That's an old argument. A _human_ argument."

Erik bristled at the implication that he was like _them_ , the baselines who'd spent decades regulating mutant lives and bodies, who'd forced registration acts through Congress and refused to allow mutants equal opportunities for employment and equality before the law. The seventies and eighties had changed that, if only in law and not in the hearts of people who thought mutants should be exterminated.

"Even though the government suspended mandatory mutant registration in the seventies, you know we're still subject to scrutiny," Charles pointed out. "Our mutations are noted in our medical and psych files; if we have a… a history with the law, our abilities become a matter of public record." He gave Erik an arch look. "But for telepaths, there are even more restrictions. I can't work for the government outside of a very few positions, and I'd prefer _not_ to work in those I'd be eligible for; the government is also good at acknowledging the utility of telepaths only when it's convenient for them. I can't work with scientists who have access to classified information. And outside of that… I have colleagues who won't go to conferences I'm speaking at. Some of them won't contribute to the X-Gene project because they're afraid I'll steal their research."

Indignation, entirely his own, pricked at Erik. "As if you'd need to steal their work."

"They don't care about that, but thank you." Charles shrugged. "When I was preparing to defend my dissertation, my committee told me I would have to fly to – to somewhere – and they would conduct my defense via teleconference. They were afraid that they'd be accused of academic impropriety if there were even a hint of the possibility of my influencing them to pass me. That I knew far more about my research than they did, that I had absolutely no reason to cheat – that I had never once been found guilty of cheating throughout my entire career – never entered into it: it was the _chance_ , however remote, that I might be less than honest that made them do what they did."

Charles hadn't told him that. Erik trembled at the border between indignation and anger, held there by the abrupt realization that he, too, had given way to the shadowy, threatening _possibility_ of Charles's power. He thought quickly back over the few times they'd conversed mentally, or when Charles's thoughts had simply sidled up next to his while they sat in on quiet evenings.

"Other mutants have it worse than I do; much worse," Charles said softly, but with a force that held Erik helplessly silent. "I'm not special, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it's – I wish I could describe what it's like, to _know_ people's fear of you, so clear you're afraid of yourself. My mutation manifested early; I can't remember a time I didn't have it, and I can't remember a time people didn't look at me as though I were about to rip their thoughts out of their skulls. I made my sister hide because I couldn't bear the thought of her experiencing that fear directed at her.

"I've made so many accommodations to the human world so I can do what I love and be happy." Charles was leaning forward now, gazing steadily at Erik and what Erik felt coming off him was not precisely anger, but not precisely sadness either. _I made those because my work is that important to me, but I had hoped that I would not have to make those sacrifices with my own kind – with those I love. I had hoped – I had thought – you understood and accepted me, because you believed so fiercely in the importance of us being what we are._

"It's easier to do in theory than in practice," Erik admitted. He had long ago stopped accommodating human anxieties about his abilities, or much caring what humans thought of what he could do; six years in in foster care after his parents' deaths, shuttled from human home to human home because mutants were seen as unfit adoptive or foster parents, had burned that caring out of him, along with trust and a great many other things.

"I didn't grow up with much," Erik said, forcing his memories to remain up at the surface, painful as they were. "It's not an excuse, it's an explanation, but… I didn't have much that I couldn't have taken away from me. My powers were one thing I had, my sense of _myself_ was another. I couldn't have that taken from me."

"Oh, Erik," and Charles leaned toward him, and seemed on the verge of reaching out to touch him, "I would never – I would _never_ have taken anything from you. Your thoughts, your memories, dreams… those would always be your own."

"I can't explain what I mean." With an effort, Erik kept the snap from his voice; it wasn't an effort he would make for many people, even if the frustration was mostly for himself. "Some things – I know you see things differently, that you can't help it, but some things aren't for sharing. Not always."

Charles nodded, withdrawing into himself somewhat. "I wish – I wish you simply could have told me that. I never… well, I tried not to pry where there was too much pain. I'd hoped you'd come to share that on your own and let me see it."

 _I want that_ , Erik thought with a sudden twist of yearning that surprised him. Swiftly, he backed away from it, _no, no I don't want it – except –_

"What do you want?" Charles asked softly. "You'll have to tell me; I won't read your mind, not for this."

"I want you with me." It was an effort to say the words, harder because they were so very true; the weight of them sat heavy on his chest and made breathing difficult. "I know – I know I can't expect anything from you, but more than anything, I want you to be with me again."

"I want to be with you, Erik," Charles said quietly, "but I don't know _how_ to be with you, and you don't know either. Come back when you've figured it out."

"Does that – " Erik began, but had to swallow around the words and the sudden impossibility of speaking them. He tapped his forehead, thought _Does this mean I can see you again?_

"The X-Genome Project conference is next weekend in Philadelphia; I'll be gone for that." Charles pulled out his iPhone and studied it intently; Erik sensed the metal body of the phone warming in the hot, anxious cup of Charles's palm. "But let me know, when you've decided and we can talk."

He hadn't realized he'd been bracing for outright rejection until the moment it didn't come. He wanted to shake from the relief of it. Instead, he only nodded.

"Now," Charles said, "Hank's having an anxiety attack about some gels. I should see to him."

"Of course," Erik said, not quite recognizing the sound of his own voice. "I'm sorry I kept you from them."

"Don't be." Charles stood, pressed a warm hand to Erik's shoulder. Erik hoped it might travel upward to trace his neck and settle against his cheek, one of Charles's favorite gestures when he was being affectionate. Charles didn't, but he did stay still for a moment, and Erik didn't know if the hope-regret-confusion was Charles bleeding into him or him spilling over at the edges.

> _Roberto Costas, 38, met Jesse Rowley at a work function both of them describe as "tedious and awful." Jesse, a hydrokinetic (and a prosecutor known for her take-no-prisoners approach), explained how she came to terms with Roberto's empathy: "At first I was uncomfortable with him simply knowing my moods – I didn't know if I was ready for that level of intimacy right off the bat. But I realized that asking him to not sense me would be like asking me to ignore what a gathering rainstorm feels like. I know people say there are differences between these two things – a person's thoughts and emotions aren't objects – but I couldn't… I couldn't ignore the thought that I was asking him to sacrifice part of himself to be with me. It's not the same as asking someone to give up smoking, you know?"_

Erik took the rest of the day off to wander around the city, paid to do something he'd never done and took the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building. In the small capsule, rocketing skyward, he reached out to the metal above and below and around him, felt the dependable strength of every beam and rivet, like traveling up the spine of a giant. Once up top, the wind bracing and promising a cool evening despite the warmth of a late fall day, he shut his eyes and let his metal-sense wander out across the island, from the surgical steel pins holding a woman's leg together to the steel-and-glass of the buildings around him to the cars processing slowly down the roads and across the arteries of the bridges, iron filings drawn by magnets to their destinations, and deep under the earth the tendrils of the subway tracks and the trains riding them.

This was the world for him, he thought. He tried to imagine it otherwise, not having an understanding of the architecture or engineering of a thing in his bones, or the turn and flux of the earth's magnetic field, and couldn't do it.

Back in the 60s they'd experimented with electroshock therapy for mutants, first as a way to keep manifesting children from destroying their homes or schools, and then, in the form of discreet clinics, a quietly doctor-approved method of social control. It didn't matter the mutation, but telepaths and kinetics got the worst of it; that was one form of torment the ones with purely physical mutations escaped. How many thousands had been left stripped of their powers, how many hundreds more had been left without the ability to control them, no one could say. The clinics had died out in the seventies, some of them destroyed by mutant rights activists, some of them silently shuttered when the government stripped their funding. If he'd been alive back then, before those days, he might have found himself "referred" on his first entrance to foster care. Charles almost certainly would have been.

Fury bubbled in him, looking back over all that history. He tried to imagine his world silenced and emptied of meaning, a life spent muffled and hobbled, and couldn't do that either. Then he tried to imagine what it would be like for mutants to do that to _other_ mutants and had to shake his head against the wrongness of it.

He took the elevator back down and went home after that.

> _Not all psionics are created equal. Thanks to anti-mutant propaganda, though, the mainstream is still flooded with images of psionics as people who casually "mind-control" others or "erase their memories" and any other horrible thing you might see in a classic supervillain movie. We've come a long way since those days, but as the reactions to psionics show, there's still plenty of paranoia to go around; it bubbles up whenever the news reports on a criminal who used his abilities in the commission of a crime. Even non-psionics in stable, happy relationships with telepaths or empaths aren't immune to it._

Friday came without any sense of anticipation for the weekend and with mingled impatience-dread for the length of the week waiting on the other side of it. Erik stalked into his office, impressed the intern with the absolute necessity of his remaining undisturbed and the consequences if he was bothered for any reason, and slammed the door behind him. 

"Ah, there is my least favorite engineer." Emma Frost slipped into his office not five minutes later, ignoring the _Do Not Feed the Shark_ sign some joker had posted on Erik's door. She was all cream and white and ice-blue eyes, her pale pink lips upcurved in a smile that held more sarcasm than pleasure. Erik supposed that, for her, they were much the same thing.

"I already emailed you the latest progress report," Erik said, not looking up from his tablet. "If you want things done faster, you could go to Hammer, but you'd be sorry."

"Oh, I'm not here about the progress report; I'm quite satisfied on that score. You may force the Massachusetts Academy to open on time." 

"Then may I ask why you're here? I can't change the specs now, not without significantly reworking the entire project."

Without being invited, Emma sank gracefully into the cheap plastic chair opposite Erik's desk. The chair was mercilessly hard and engineered for discomfort; that it was in Erik's office was no coincidence. Emma lost some of her superiority as she shifted, trying to disguise the awkwardness by smoothing her skirt across her thighs. The point of an expensive high heel tapped Erik's desk.

"I'm here," Emma said, apparently giving up, "because Tony informed me you're trying to get back into Charles Xavier's good graces."

"Of course he did."

"Tony never can keep quiet when it comes to juicy gossip," Emma said. "I believe he needs some sort of outlet, having to watch what he says about confidential projects and classified material. But you ought to give him credit for altruism, sugar; he knows you've been doing some… extracurricular reading, shall we say, and thought that you'd like to talk to an actual psionic who isn't Charles."

"And he picked… you," Erik said flatly. "I'm not entirely sure 'altruistic' is the word I'd use."

Emma made an equivocating gesture. "Well, I'm here now, if you _must_ talk about it."

Talking emotions with Emma was like rolling over to expose his soft underbelly. Erik folded in on himself and let the silence stretch, filling his thoughts with equations and orders for Emma to go away.

"Did you know he has something around ten thousand _likes_ on Psingles.com?" Emma asked as she inspected flawlessly manicured fingers.

"Singles.com?" Christ, Charles was on a _dating site_? For that matter, _Emma_ was on a dating site?

"Psingles with a _psi_ ," Emma clarified with a smirk. She drummed those flawlessly manicured fingers on Erik's desk. Erik looked up unwillingly. "It's for psionics seeking other psionics only, much more exclusive than Mutant Match or the other services."

"I wouldn't have thought you needed one," Erik said. 

"Why? It's incredibly gauche to break into a relative stranger's head with _Pardon me for disturbing you, but I'm interested in you, possibly sexually, and want to know if you'd like to get a drink and come back to my place_. Besides, not all telepaths are created equal; some can't project thoughts, others can but only in a very limited range or with direct contact." Emma gave Erik a pitying look. "Contrary to what you may think, we telepaths _do_ have a sense of etiquette and privacy; we even, at times, prefer to keep ourselves to ourselves and not let anybody in. Charles can be damnably hard to read when he wants to be. It makes flirting unnecessarily difficult."

Before Erik could say anything to that, Emma pulled her phone out of her purse. After tapping at the screen a few times, she turned the phone and held it out to Erik, who accepted it suspiciously.

Emma had brought up Charles's _listing_ on Psingles.com. _He could have put more effort into his profile_ , Emma informed him as Erik skimmed over things he knew because he'd known Charles in far more detail than a dropdown menu could provide (the precise shade of the brown of his hair, that Charles had run a 2:41:5 in the New York Marathon in college, that he loved tea and was agnostic and knew three languages and spoke French with an accent that embarrassed Erik to hear) and dwelt on his profile picture. Trust Charles to be clueless about it, Erik thought; he'd used his faculty page head shot, which meant Erik got the full force of the focus and attention Charles had directed at the camera.

"It says you're seventy-eight percent enemy," Erik observed.

Emma snatched her phone back. "Well, those are only _baseline_ rubrics, and as you ought to know, opposites attract and all that. We had a nice time, but Charles is so _earnest_ and passionate. I have a hard time being with people who aren't as jaded as I am."

Erik ignored the twitch of jealousy at the _passionate_ and said, "I don't see what Tony thought he was going to get out of this. Does he want me to back off?"

"I think he wanted you to understand something you're just not getting." Emma sighed. "Look, sweetie, we're _mutants_. Individuals. Nothing's set in stone for any of us. Charles is distressingly and depressingly honest, but just because he follows the rules doesn't mean all of us do. Yours truly, for example." Emma placed a delicate hand on her breast, just beneath the teardrop glitter of her diamond necklace. "Of course, you oughtn't judge all telepaths based on _me_ , but take us as we come."

"Charles told me this," Erik admitted.

"Then you shouldn't be surprised when other telepaths tell you the same thing," Emma said. "I don't let anti-psionic prejudice bother me because I can't afford to; if I had to think any more about some pathetic mid-level executive being sent to a meeting in place of his CEO because the CEO is afraid I'd filch company secrets out of his head… Well, my feelings wouldn't be hurt, but I would be annoyed. There's enough in this world to annoy me as it is, and I have more important things to think about."

Charles had said much the same thing too, in one of their arguments. _Fights_ , Erik told himself; they'd been proper fights, when both of them weren't afraid to use weapons to hurt the other. Erik, refusing to admit his own uncertainties about Charles's abilities, had countered with the many, _many_ other areas in which Charles was privileged – and anyway, if he didn't like what people had to think about him, maybe he shouldn't listen in without their permission.

"I still have no idea what to do," he said, and braced himself for the slashing knife of her laughter.

"Oh, sugar," Emma said instead, "he's tied himself up in knots over you. It's both adorable and pathetic." She stood and brushed invisible dust off her immaculate white skirt. "But, as a psionic to a non-psionic, if you can't help him untie himself… you should probably tell him that, leave him alone, and find some nice metallokinetic to get the taste out of your mouth."

Except Erik didn't want the taste of Charles out of his mouth. He tried to quiet the questions in his head, told himself that if Charles had moved on he would have said it and wouldn't have given Erik any kind of hope. Charles had never believed in repaying cruelty with more of the same.

The look Emma gave him told him she knew what conclusion he'd come to: an arch of a sleek brow, that smile again, before she collected her purse and left.

> _"To be honest, I was worried," says Kevin Huang about his first days after finding out his partner Blair is a touch-activated telepath. "My mutation is pretty physical – super-strength. I didn't have a great past, and I did some things I wasn't proud of. When we started getting serious and Blair told me exactly what it was he could do, I totally freaked. But then I figured if he'd known, he hadn't said anything – and he hadn't judged me because he was still with me. And if the worst that could happen was the man I love finding out some uncomfortable truths about me but sticking around anyway… Well, I guess I've got it pretty good."_

The weekend dragged its feet into Sunday without any clear answer to Charles presenting itself. Erik went out Friday and Saturday night -- Friday evening would have horrified his mother, who had insisted on the family being home together even if they didn't go to services (he had stayed in Hebrew school until his bar mitzvah; that was another thing the state couldn't take from him) – but he'd been too restless to get the sort of drunk he wanted. The alcohol and anger had come together in the crucible of his gut and after one college jagoff asked what the fuck Erik was looking at, it had either been magnet the asshole to the floor while Erik pounded the shit out of him, or leave.

He was thirty-three and _past this_. The night had sharpened the blurred edges in his brain enough for him to walk home and remember that trying to track down Charles was a bad idea. Once sobriety returned on Saturday, he had sense enough to be ashamed; he spent that evening wandering aimlessly, making his way through the crowds headed up to Times Square with the lights pulsing at him and hundreds of voices pushing at his skull.

Was that what it was like for Charles? He thought about the metaphor of the crowded room, if the world was more or less an endless murmur in the corner of Charles's consciousness, a sea of voices out of which one or two would rise to catch his attention, or into which he might dip a hand if he needed or wanted something. Erik imagined being down in that sea, waiting to be pulled up – like a fish on a hook, or a drowning man reaching upward, hoping.

Sunday morning found him at his computer, folded into his usual spot on the couch. He'd opened the laptop with the vague intention of logging into the Stark Industries server and doing enough work to get Emma off his back, but after an hour of wandering around the Internet, found himself writing instead.

> _Charles:_
> 
> _I never told you this, but maybe you knew for yourself. I never asked if you knew, and if you did you never told me. But anyway:_
> 
> _My parents died when I was twelve, in a robbery that wouldn't have gotten their killer enough money to pay a legal aid attorney. One minute we'd gone to the store to pick up groceries for the weekend (it was Friday afternoon and my mother was hurrying us up so we could be home for Shabbat) and the next I was lying on the floor, watching my mother die. I had manifested only a couple of weeks before. To this day I still wonder if I had manifested earlier, or had better control, if I hadn't been so terrified and confused, if I could have saved her and my father._
> 
> _I spent the next six years in the foster care system. I don't need to tell you what that was like; you can guess for yourself. Or maybe you know. Those six years I had almost everything that mattered taken from me. The only things the state and my foster "parents" (I can't call them parents, because they weren't parents, not in any sense of the word) couldn't take from me were my abilities – although they tried with one of those wonderful "reform schools" – and my sense of who I was. What I mean by 'sense' I can't tell you; I can only tell you that I had my memories, emotions, and thoughts, and those all belonged to me. I decided my first night in a group home that no one could have those things._
> 
> _Objectively, I know my thoughts and memories are nothing special. But subjectively – to me – they are. Maybe this is something a psionic can't understand, but that's the way it is for those of us who spent most of our lives trapped in our own heads. For a long time those memories of my family, the waiting to turn eighteen so I could escape, the anger… they were all I had. Still, I should have known to trust you with them, if you'd wanted to see them; if you had pulled them out from wherever I keep them, I should have known you wouldn't have laughed at them or considered them unimportant, because you considered me important. _
> 
> _It still startles me when I think about it, that you thought I was worth knowing that way. There were times when we were together that I wondered why you were with me and what you could possibly see in me. I wonder that now, too. I wonder what you saw, and I wish I'd thought to ask. I don't regret most things I've done in my life, but I do regret that. I regret losing you – or, I suppose, never really having you, because I only allowed you to show me part of yourself. In another world I could hate you right now for not seeing things my way and I would refuse to trust you – but still, I think I'd always regret hurting you._
> 
> _I don't know why I'm writing this, unless maybe it's because saying it out loud is much harder. I never would say these things, not for anyone. Except you._  
> 

By Saturday the island was too small to hold him.

Most people would find some quiet place to hide upstate, the parks lining the Hudson or the Adirondacks. Erik toyed with the idea of Boston, with the steel and alloys of its financial district, a flight to Pittsburgh for the quiet rusting of the bridges.

Instead, knowing it was a terrible idea, he went to Philadelphia. It was selfish – a strike against him already – but he went.

The week had passed in a blur of work, the occasional hiatus of a meeting with Tony (who had wisely stopped interrogating Erik about Charles) or talks with Azazel punctuating extended sessions with his tablet and the schematics for the Frost Corp. project. The letter to Charles, printed out in a moment of impulse, stayed folded between the two credit cards in Erik's wallet. Thursday had begun with him standing over the burbling coffee pot, waiting for the first infusion of caffeine and realizing _Charles is probably out of the city now_. 

It wouldn't make much of a difference, would it? He had no idea of Charles's range, if the river and the bent elbow of New Jersey might be enough put him beyond Charles's reach or if the distance was no more effort than Charles brushing a hand against his as they walked down the street. Charles was powerful, he knew that, or surmised it from various conversations that in the past had served to make that instinctive, unthinking anxiety curl up his spine. Still, difference or no, he rode down to Penn Station and before thinking too much more about it, finagled his way onto an Acela and the calming, heartbeat regularity of the iron-skinned train car riding miles of railway.

He found the conference without much difficulty thanks to the conference website and the thicket of anti-mutant baseline protesters gathered outside the convention center. A few scientists, one of them the large blue-furred graduate student Erik had seen in Charles's lab, clustered behind the window and frowned out at them; a handful of police officers, most of them looking like they'd rather be anywhere else, occasionally prodded the protesters back from blocking the entrance. In response, the protesters waved their signs and shouted about how evolution was blasphemy and mutants "didn't exist" and God was going to punish America for them for existing. 

Erik resisted the temptation to do something violent – he might have at seventeen, too angry and chafing at the bit, anxious for freedom – and slipped into the echoing, impersonal heart of the convention center, moving upstream against a crowd of academic-looking people.

A program lay discarded on the edge of a marble planter, bookmarked and forgotten by an absent-minded hand. Erik leafed through it to the index, all the way in the back and fifth in the surprisingly long list of Xs.

_X-Genome Project Graduate Student Posters 95  
X-Genome Project Programming Group 78  
X-Phenotype Special Working Groups (see working group headings)  
X-Transcriptonomics Working Group 44, 71  
Xavier, Charles 10, 58, 113_

Session 113 – that was two floors up and over in five minutes. Erik booked it upstairs, in time to catch the sudden rise in voices behind the door, a burst of applause as the moderator asked the audience to thank the presenters for such a stimulating session and discussion.

Erik waited, _fuck_ it was interminable, as the voices died to a companionable buzz, five minutes of that before the door opened and a brace of scientists bustled out, chattering animatedly to each other. The paper seemed an impossible weight in his pocket – he'd taken it out on the train ride, read it, refolded it, put it away, taken it out to read it again, rinse repeat rinse repeat – and the words weighed heavy too. Keeping them in his head made his breath run short, like trust was running a marathon uphill.

A few more scientists trickled out, then a brief flood of them before the doors swung shut. Maybe Charles had canceled – maybe he'd sensed Erik coming and cleared out – maybe Erik had read the program wrong, and fuck, he wasn't _used_ to this, tense with fear and hope instead of the anger that made wanting things, if not easier, then less disappointing when he didn't get what he wanted in the end.

At last, at _last_ he caught the peculiar cadence of Charles's voice – Charles in the grip of lecture mode, ecstatic with knowledge and enthusiasm. He came out alongside two older men and one woman, trying to look them all three in the eye at once as he tried to explain himself to them. Erik could imagine the mental lecture accompanying it, not the dry specifics of genes and proteins, but the passion that had so bemused Emma: _it's so beautiful can't you see it when it's laid out like this for you so clear and perfect don't you see please let me help you see it_.

"Charles," he said.

Charles froze. The scientists with him also paused and darted quizzical looks between Erik and Charles.

"Oh," Charles said intelligently. Then to his colleagues, "I'm terribly sorry, but I forgot I had an appointment after our session, and I've kept him waiting. Perhaps I could catch up with you later? I have Dr. Neramani's number."

"You should," the woman said, and leaned in to kiss Charles on the cheek. She was dark-haired, striking in a sea of mostly-bland academics – not as magnetic as Charles, but Erik could see where she could compel. He tried and failed to keep the jealousy down, and to stop the memory of Emma smirking at him from across his desk.

"Ah, the open bar," one of the scientists said fondly, apparently oblivious to the byplay. "We'll be there."

"I'll find you," Charles promised. The scientists seemed to accept this and trooped off, Dr. Neramani leaving with one last fond look and hand-squeeze. Charles turned to face Erik then, and the bewilderment on his face would have been endearing if Erik hadn't been spilling over with nervousness.

"You – I wasn't expecting you. This," Charles said at last. "I don't suppose you suddenly cultivated an interest in the X-Project's work toward a reference genome for psionics."

"Not as such." Erik coughed and swallowed, and on the next breath felt peace coming over him. It was, he thought, the peace of resignation and it was strange, because Erik Lehnsherr had never resigned himself to anything, ever. "I couldn't wait."

"I see." Charles glanced around. Most of the other scientists had dispersed, either to other sessions or to lunch. The conference room gaped emptily behind him. "Should we..?" 

Erik heeled him, pulling the doors shut by their brass-lined bars. The room was large, stuffy for all that with an undertone of dust and recycled air. Hidden in its recess above, a projection unit hummed its way down into slumber. Charles hitched himself up on the desk positioned at the front of the room, legs dangling and fingers laced casually, but still leaning forward, his eyes fixed on Erik.

"I should have expected something like this." Charles laughed, not sounding particularly amused. "You were never very good at waiting, if there was something you decided needed to be done."

"I want – I want to show you something first," Erik said instead, instead of admitting that Charles was right. He tapped his temple. "If you would agree."

He thought of the letter, the already-worn, torn, and much-folded paper of it, the coffee stain in one corner where he'd been careless. He hoped Charles saw what hid behind that, his need to keep himself close, a habit he'd had long before the two of them had stumbled across each other, and the bewildering notion that Charles had found him worth knowing for more than his engineering skills or his body or anything else most people had wanted him for.

Charles rocked back a bit, eyes wide, but said nothing.

"I haven't changed my mind from last week," Erik said when Charles's silence continued. "I want to be with you."

"I still don't know _how_ ," Charles told him softly. "I can't answer that question for you."

"The last thing I should have done was expect you to shut off part of yourself." Erik moved closer, shuffling over cheap carpet, absently shifting chairs aside by their metal legs. Charles sat quite still, poised on his desk. "I can't tell you how sorry I am for that – and it's not because I'm terrible with words, but because there aren't any. And I should not have needed anyone to tell me that; I should've realized that for myself."

"Not a lot of people do."

Erik came to a halt a few feet away, close enough that the pulse of iron in Charles's blood was a steady throb in the corner of Erik's awareness where his power sat. Charles made no move to get up, and gave no indication that he was looking in on the maelstrom in Erik's head. _Maddening_ , Erik thought, and that – oh, that tricked a grin out of Charles, who tried to smother it and failed.

 _I want you to hear me_ , Erik thought, and barreled on with the clumsiest series of words known to man, because Charles had wanted words: "If you – you said you wanted to be together. And I can't… I want to let you in. I _will_ let you in. And I'll tell you if I can't talk about it, but I won't stop you from looking."

Charles stared at Erik, as poleaxed as Erik had ever seen him.

"I don't say things I don't mean," Erik said. "I've been told it's either my greatest virtue or most annoying quality." _Please look, please see how much I mean this._

"You're still afraid," Charles said at last. It didn't sound judgmental, or sad, or much of anything.

"Not of you." _I should never have been_.

Charles slid off the desk enough so he was more leaning against it than standing, hands gripping the edge. He gazed at some point off to the left, maybe at the minds on the other side of the conference room wall.

"In the interests of full disclosure," Charles said slowly, "I should tell you I used to not be so… scrupulous. At least, not as honest as Emma makes me out to be. But then, I suppose, I'm a paragon of virtue next to her."

"'Virtuous' isn't a word I'd use to describe you, Charles." _Not with what we did, all those nights tangled up._

"Thank you for that," Charles said, properly and exaggeratedly aggrieved, and also somewhat red. "But when I was younger I wasn't above – I wasn't above using my abilities in ways and for reasons you might object to. Convincing my stepbrother he was covered in warts after he tried to push me down the stairs, for one. I wished I'd had the power to erase my stepfather's memory or make him divorce my mother, but I was too young and never could manage it."

It was a test, and one Erik had to pass. He fastened onto the human stepbrother and stepfather; Charles had never talked much about them except to say they were in the past and gone, and only had what power they did because Charles chose to give it to them. "They hurt you first," he said at last, "and you struck back. I'd be even more of a hypocrite if I told you what you did to save yourself was wrong."

"But the point remains, I _could_ do, and have done, these things. I don't want you to think I'm innocent." A few more images, almost sheepish: Charles in bars, telepathically gleaning the drink preferences of a pretty girl, the few times Charles had dug up some insecurity or past transgression and used it as a weapon in a disagreement. "Eventually," Charles continued, blushing, "I realized doing that was unfulfilling. Somewhat selfish, but then I realized doing anything under false pretenses – not allowing the other person to see who _I_ was – was unfair to them, and I couldn't be happy, not when I had that kind of advantage and didn't have to be vulnerable if I didn't want to be."

And that – that was an out, if Erik wanted to take it. _I could do the same thing to you, too; you're right to fear having your free will taken or compromised. You can leave now and be justified._ He didn't want it.

"I meant what I said the last time we spoke." Charles was tilting his head to look up at Erik, eyes startling in the beige monotony of the room. "I can't take _anything_ from you; I never would. The memories of your parents, growing up, all the good things and bad things – your disgraceful taste in shirts, for example – they _are_ you. And if I changed them, you wouldn't be the person I – well."

Charles huffed out a breath and looked away, biting his lip. Erik very much wanted to soothe that spot, to tug that soft flesh out from under the canine and press his thumb to it. He stayed where he was.

"I would have made myself be open for you, you know," Charles said. "If you'd asked, I would have shown you everything, and you would have known me as well as I know you. Better, maybe; I always felt I didn't know you well at all."

"Why the hell you'd trust me with that, I have no idea," Erik said gruffly. He _did_ touch Charles this time, a brush against the back of his hand, and Charles shivered. "Honestly, Charles."

"I should think that'd be obvious." Charles's eyes were very blue and very close, even if he was leaning slightly away.

"I still can't believe that." It was, Erik thought, like an exchange of weapons, one person giving the other the thing that could destroy him.

 _Or save him_ , Charles said. _It's not always about mutually-assured destruction._

"No," Erik had to agree, "it isn't," because losing Charles – realizing what he'd done to lose Charles in the first place – had almost ended him when nothing else life had given him could.

 _Can we do this?_ He wanted to step closer, as if physical proximity could press his case and Charles could feel how much he wanted this written in his skin. _I can. With your help, I can. And I can't promise I won't be wrong or I won't hurt you again, but I swear I won't fear you._

"Tomorrow I'll tell you," Charles said, but with a smile that took the edge off disappointment. _You know, like we'd originally planned._ "I do have professional obligations tonight, and I need – I need time, Erik, truly."

There wasn't anything to say to that, not when Erik had laid himself out already.

So Erik said, "You mean you need the open bar." He made himself not think about Dr. Neramani and the familiar fondness as she'd touched Charles.

"I need to _think_ ," Charles stressed, "and that may be aided by alcohol, I admit. But – in all seriousness, Erik, I need tonight and tomorrow, and I swear you'll have your answer." _I would never hurt you, not like that – stringing you along._

 _I know_ , Erik thought. It had been one of the few consolations in the past week, that at the end of it he would know one way or another.

He let Charles go at last, and made himself take another escalator down into the lobby. Short as he was, Charles was quickly swallowed by the crowd, only the beacon of his watch and the ever-present pen guiding Erik along with him as Charles made his way through the shoals of scientists to an elevator. On the edge of the crowd as he was, Erik could look up and follow the elevator's progress, and see that Charles saw him.

 _Tomorrow_ , Charles repeated.

It was more than he'd hoped for, and more than he'd had any right to hope for. Erik navigated back to the station, and once in the reassuring embrace of the train car (and ignoring the shrieking of someone's brat), tried not to reflect on having to spend the next day at loose ends. He had never done _waiting_ well, but it was for Charles to come back to him if he wanted, not for Erik to go and get him.

The train pulled into Penn Station with a wheeze and moan of brakes, a symphony of steel settling into quiet. Around him humans in their hundreds rose and filed for the exits, their watches, jewelry, pens, surgical steel, hidden weapons, all of it singing quietly in the corner of his head as Erik got up to follow them back up to the sidewalk.

* * *

Monday morning he beat the dawn to the office. Aside from the security guard, the only person Erik encountered was Tony in the throes either of a caffeine high or inspiration ("Oh, is _that_ the time? Am I up late or early?"), and thus not inclined to talk. His office closed around him, familiar and metal-lined, everything in it there for a purpose (a bare space, still, where a photo of him and Charles had been until he'd tossed it) and Erik settled in to work.

By noon he had the fourth iteration of a plasma beam control plate emailed to Emma, tagged with _I hope you're satisfied; if you want it to look pretty, find a fashion designer_ , and so by noon he had little to do except growl at the interns and, while staring blankly at the next looming project, think over the future.

He tried to outrun his anxiety in the park, but it dogged him and breathed over his shoulder, _you should be doing something, anything, not this, not waiting – go find him somehow, do what you need to do, how can you wait like this how how how_. He wondered if Charles could teach him patience, or if that lesson was beyond him now; _Good things come to those who wait_ , except few good things had ever come to him, and there'd been no point in waiting to accept the bad, Erik reminded himself as he sped up, looking for speed enough to chase after any kind of reassurance. Startled walkers and joggers scattered apart in front of him; Erik blew by, oblivious, trying to screw his focus to the rhythm of his heart and the thunder of his feet on the pavement, trying to run faster.

Defeated and exhausted, he turned for home, back to the office for his clothes and tablet, and then the subway ride, sweaty and repulsive enough that people gave him space despite it being on the border of rush hour. His legs wanted to shake heading up the stairs and then heading down the block to his apartment, and he'd sunk himself deep enough into a series of reminders _one foot in front of the other, upstairs, shower, news, don't think don't think_ that he almost missed the first tentative brushes of warmth and welcome.

Forcing himself to calm, he took the elevator up, ten stories (more steel, the counterweight easing down, the gears and pulley turning, the strength of the cable, don't hurry it). His breath came like he'd only now finished a fast interval, too quick and not full enough to satisfy, and over his heart's sudden pounding he heard and felt _calm_ , like a hand on his shoulder to knead the tension from it.

Stepping out of the elevator and looking down the hall he saw a figure leaning against his door and froze. Charles was looking directly at him, vivid and vibrant and spilling over with _anxiety-determination-hope_ , fear mixed in here and there, enough to sour, and Erik froze, overcome by it. He was, Erik thought distantly, standing in the hallway of his apartment building, disheveled and completely disreputable, with his leather briefcase sweat-glued uncomfortably to his thigh, and petrified in a way that had to do more with what Charles would say and not with Charles seeing him like this – unbarriered, more naked than if they'd been in bed together.

 _Don't be afraid_ , Charles told him, straightening as Erik found the presence of mind enough to approach. _You don't have to be, I swear._

"I know," Erik said, and sighed to feel the familiar presence of Charles's mind – familiar, missed, longed-for in moments Erik had never let himself examine – slide along his. _Is this a yes? Are you –_

 _I couldn't wait._ A handful of memories spilled into him, as if Charles were tipping coins into Erik's palm: Charles heading for his hotel room instead of the party, ignoring the texts from the scientists he'd meant to join, the instinctive drawing-back from wanting his answer to Erik to be _yes_ for fear of Erik hurting him – that they might try again, that the pain would be worse the second time – but unable to stop himself wanting anyway, the unhappy thought that often it was better not to have what you wanted balanced by reminding himself of how Erik had communicated with him, mind to mind, without flinching or backing away from Charles's power. _I had to – I had to know that you knew I'd forgiven you, hard as it was to do._

It wasn't a _yes, I want to be with you_ , but absolution was maybe more than Erik had deserved anyway. He nodded, not trusting words enough to show that he understood and tried not to think _no no no, it's worse don't you see, I can't live with you forgiving me and then wanting to be apart. I would almost rather have you hate me, so I could tell myself I hate you, even if I never could._

"And I want to try," Charles said quietly. Spoken words were heavy, Erik thought; breath and moisture gave them dimension, solid enough to be shaped by Charles's mouth. "On these terms: you don't keep me out, but I'll respect your desire not to talk about everything, not if you don't want to. Another chance, for both of us."

"I don't deserve it," Erik said.

 _I think I'm the one who gets to decide that here_ , Charles said. _And I've made my choice; you have to make yours now._

Into the space left by disbelief came _please tell me yes we can have this please after I came all this way I love you you know and I don't care if the books and common sense say this is a bad idea just say yes say you want to try after all._

"I do." _Always_ , because he couldn't trust that to come through and Erik put all the force of his conviction behind it. _No more hiding, not from each other, yes?_

Why Charles was relieved when Erik was the one who felt ready to collapse from it, Erik had no idea. But he was, the sudden pulse of it washing over him warm and heady, and behind it the peculiar resonant sense of _Charles_ lingered and settled comfortably down. Where fear or annoyance might have been, Erik found only relief of his own, and too many other things to sort out, at least not when he was sticky and uncomfortable and helplessly caught up in Charles's presence in front of him.

"Are we going to spend all night out in my hallway, or are we going to go in?" he asked gruffly.

"Inside sounds lovely," Charles murmured, and stepped back when Erik flicked open the deadbolt and chain lock with a gesture, and followed him inside. _There are still some details to sort out, but those can wait until after you smell somewhat less abominable._

"I feel so very loved," Erik said, not without sarcasm, but not without honesty either, warmth like gold under the sun suffusing him – Charles's happiness, his own on display for Charles to see (his _relief_ still, his not quite believing Charles was here with him, and he wanted Charles to see that, see what this meant to him and how undone he was by it, that he didn't fear it) – and Erik thought, for the first time in years, of the possibility of things like safety and home and _staying_ , with Charles here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to give them a happy ending here. The canon ending, with Erik deciding not to trust Charles not to deflect him from his goals, makes me too sad to write an AU iteration of it.
> 
> Thank you again to professor and Miss Poste, whose original comments got this started, and to my lady damek, who spurred me on with many words of encouragement and gifsets, and to rrhiab for a very stimulating (NOT like that) exchange in the comments on individuality, intellectual property, and Adam Smith.


End file.
